We’ve all heard the famous Damon Runyon line about a man wanting to bet you that he can make the jack of diamonds jump out of a brand new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. “Do not bet him, for as sure as you do you will end up with an earful of cider.” Especially in the gambling world, an easy thing only looks easy, and you are well advised to evaluate the man first, and the proposition after.
I was recently at a filming of the UK television show Late Night Poker, which gathers fifty of the top poker players from Europe and the world for a four day Texas Hold’em tournament in a television studio in Cardiff, Wales. As each poker player plays only four to eight hours in the studio, it leaves about seventy-two hours of free time spent shuttling between the green room and the bar.
Now poker players are mostly used to playing poker twenty-three out of twenty-four hours a day, so sitting around watching others gamble doesn’t exactly scratch the itch. And as every poker player will tell you, there’s only one way to kill time, and that’s get betting. As a result, the green room, where poker players sweat the studio action on a closed circuit TV along with backers, wives, and girlfriends, is often the site of more heated gambling than that going on in the tournament itself.
People will bet on anything, from backgammon to gin rummy to laying and taking odds on football. There are people calling in horse bets to their bookmaker, and big money Scrabble. But the best sorts of bets are the proposition bets, the action made and paid while watching friends battle it out for 50,000 pounds.
“Who’ll give me 4-1 that Barny wins the next hand?” Someone might shout.
“Mark for a tenner!”” Is the response.
“Even money Devilfish is going to fold to the raise,” says Simon Trumper when the world class David Ulliot faces a tough decision.
“A hundred says he doesn’t,” comes from the back of the room.
“Mark!” And the bet is made.
Money flies fast, offers fly faster, and if you’re not careful some of the sharpest gamblers in the world can bite off your head and empty your wallet faster than a four-card flush.
One such star is Joe Beevers. He’s a poker foursome who has been raising eyebrows by taking down cash prizes all over the globe. Now you have to realize that Joe is a very good grafter. This means that his head is never out of whack, that he’s always planning ahead, always looking at the angles, and if need be Joe could pull money out of a roomful of vacuum cleaners.
So that’s Joe Beevers. And in the midst of this mayhem that is the studio green room it’s Joe who says to no one in particular, “Has anybody noticed how aces, deuces and jacks are appearing on every flop? I feel lucky. I want to bet on an ace, jack, or deuce appearing on the next flop. Will anybody bet me?”
Now because of the way he’s offered the proposition and because of the way the brain works without a calculator, enough people started thinking that they might have Joe in a spot so that he was loaded up with action from the first flop on. Joe said, furthermore, that people didn’t have to decide if they wanted to bet him until just before the flop was dealt. My first thought was that, hey if I wait until someone has raised before the flop with what looks like one or more likely aces, then I’m going to get the better of this deal. My second thought was that Joe’s no fool. My third thought was about Damon Runyon. And what came out of my mouth was, “I want to bet also. I want to bet whatever Joe’s betting.”
Now at the time I didn’t know Joe was a massive favorite in the proposition, like between sixty-three and seventy percent worth. But I know enough about gamblers not to fade their propositions. I’ll eat with them, drink with them, and invite them to my wedding, but if it looks too good to be true, just put on your earmuffs and wait for the cider.
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